Volume 18 , Issue 15

Walking With Sweet Silly Sadie

Seventy-seven years ago this month, in April 1939, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was first published. The novel tells the story of the Joads, a struggling family that makes their way to California after being forced to leave their Oklahoma farm by financial hardship and the Dust Bowl.

The Joads were representative of hundreds of thousands of Great Plains residents during the 1930s who struggled to make a living during the Dust Bowl, when massive dust storms caused by drought and poor farming techniques swept across the American and Canadian prairies, destroying crops and livestock and thus the livelihoods of many.

Found on Newspapers.com

It was the greatest dust storm on record that drifted across more than half of the Untied sTates on this date to the Atlantic Seaboard. It added to the devastation of a prolonged drought in the mid-western grain land and caused wide discomfort in eastern states.

Meteorological authorities said the storm's extent was almost unprecedented and that the dust clouds, raised by winds from the scorched plains of the west, might continue to drift high in the air for many miles.

The dust cloud was estimated in the west at 1,500 miles long and almost 1,000 wide at one time. It made the sky a haze, sifted through tiny window cracks and laid a fine coat of dust inside countless skyscrapers of New York, homes and stores.

Besides injuring, killing many head of cattle int eh west, the dust caused human discomfort and injury. Many hospitals reported twice the normal number of patients seeking removal of foreign matter from their eyes.

The visibility was strictly limited, but airfields reported flying as usual. The western skies were clear Friday, 11 May 1934 after the dust cloud passed eastward, but in the course of its formation the storm affected many states, including: North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

It was May 11, 1934, a gigantic cloud of dust 1,500 miles long, 900 miles across and two miles high buffeted and smothered almost one-third of the nation in a spectacular climax to a drought more damaging than the 1927 floods which made 600,000 persons homeless.

It was more than 36 hours arid winds from the plains of Western Canada swirled tons of sand and grit eastward. Cattle in parched fields sickened and died as dust blanketed grass and fodder. Thousands of persons suffered seriously from ye and nose irritations. Health authorities were warning of the danger of dust carried epidemics.

Pilots of commercial airlines climbed to heights of almost 15,000 feet to reach clear air. That's how high the dust cloud reached. The dusty storm covered the country between the eastern slope of the Rock Mountains and the eastern end of the great Lakes, reaching from north of the Canadian border.

Good Night! Good Luck!
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